“Well, it’s really all the same, wherever you begin,” said the Master as he turned toward Sōsuke. “‘Your original face prior to your parents’ birth—what is that?’[79] Why not mull this one over a bit?”
Sōsuke was not at all sure about the “prior to your parents’ birth” part, but concluded that, at any rate, the idea was to try to grasp the essence of what, finally, this thing called the self is. He was too ignorant of Zen even to ask for further clarification. Along with Gidō he withdrew in silence and returned to the Issōan.
Over dinner Gidō explained to Sōsuke that consultations with the Master took place once in the morning and once in the evening, and that at noon there were sessions known as the Exposition of Principles.[80]
“It may turn out that you won’t have reached a proper understanding by the consultation time tonight,” he added solicitously, “and so perhaps I could take you to the Master tomorrow morning, or even in the evening.” Gidō then advised him that, since it would initially be difficult to remain sitting in meditation for a long stretch, it might be a good idea for Sōsuke to light an incense stick in his room, as a sort of timer to signal moments in which to take little breaks between his meditation sessions.
Incense in hand, Sōsuke passed by the sanctuary, entered the six-mat room assigned to him, and sat down on the tatami in something of a daze. He was overwhelmed by a sense of how utterly removed these so-called koan were from the reality of his present life. “Suppose I was suffering at this moment from a stomachache,” he put it to himself. “So I go off somewhere in search of relief from the pain and I’m presented with, of all things, a difficult mathematical problem, and I’m told, ‘Oh, here’s something for you to mull over.’” The situation he faced now was no different from this. Mull it over? All right, he could certainly do that, but to do it before his stomachache had let up was asking entirely too much.
Nevertheless, he’d taken a leave of absence and come all this way. And even if only out of consideration for the man who had written him the introduction, and now for this Gidō who was doing so much to look after him, he could not act rashly. He resolved to summon up whatever courage he could in his present state and face the koan head on. Sōsuke himself had absolutely no idea where such efforts might lead him or what effects they might produce deep within. Beguiled by the enticing word “satori,” he had embarked with uncharacteristic boldness on a most challenging venture. Even now he clung to the tenuous hope that his venture would succeed, that he just might be delivered from the weakness, instability, and anxiety that assailed him.
He propped up a slender incense stick in the cold ashes inside the brazier and set it to smoldering, then sat on a cushion and folded his legs, as he had been taught, into a half-lotus position. After the sun set, his room, which had not seemed particularly cold by day, suddenly turned frigid. The temperature fell low enough to send shivers up and down his spine as he sat.
Sōsuke pondered. But it was all so nebulous that he did not know whether to begin by considering the general approach to take in his thoughts or proceed directly to the concrete problem assigned to him. He began to wonder if he had not come on a wild-goose chase. He felt like someone who, having set out to lend a hand to a friend whose house has burned down, instead of consulting a map and traveling by the most direct route, gets caught up in some totally irrelevant diversion.
All manner of things drifted through his head. Some of them were clearly visible in his mind’s eye; others, amorphous, passed by like so many clouds. It was impossible to determine whence they had arisen or where they were headed. Some would fade away only to be replaced by others. This process repeated itself endlessly. The traffic coursing through the space inside his head was boundless, incalculable, inexhaustible; no command from Sōsuke could possibly put a stop to it, or even momentarily arrest it. The harder he tried to shut it off, the more copiously it poured forth.
In a panic he recalled his everyday self and looked around the room, which was lit only by a dim lamp. The incense stick propped up amid the ashes had burned down only halfway. He became aware as never before how terrifyingly time prolonged itself.
Once again Sōsuke pondered. Immediately, objects of all shapes and colors began to pass through his mind. They moved along like an army of ants, which, having passed by, was promptly followed by another. Only Sōsuke’s body remained still. His conscious being was forever on the move: an excruciating, unremitting, almost unbearable motion.
His body, rigid from the meditating, began to ache, starting with his kneecaps. His spine, which he had kept ramrod straight, began to bend forward. Sōsuke took hold of his left foot with both hands at the instep and lowered it. He got to his feet and stood aimlessly in the middle of the room. He felt the urge to open the shoji, step outside, and simply walk about in front of the gate. The night was still. It did not seem possible that anyone else was around, asleep or awake. He lost the courage to go outside. Yet the prospect of just sitting there and being tormented by demonic phantasms was terrifying.
Resolutely he propped up another stick of incense and proceeded to repeat more or less the same sequence he had gone through before. In the end he reasoned that if the main point of this was to ponder the koan in question, it could not make much difference whether he pondered while sitting or while lying down. Taking the soiled futon from where it lay folded in the corner he spread it out and burrowed under the covers. At this, worn out from his exertions, without a moment’s pause in which to ponder anything, he fell into a deep sleep.
When Sōsuke awoke the shoji near his pillow were already light, hinting at the sun’s bright rays that would soon be cast on the white paper. Naturally, at this mountain temple where by day everything was left deserted and unlocked, he had not heard any sound of the retreat being shuttered the night before. The very instant he became aware that he was not lying in his dark room at the base of the embankment below Sakai, he got up and went out to the veranda, where a giant cactus growing up to the eaves loomed before his eyes. From there he retraced yesterday’s steps, past the altar in the sanctuary and back to the anteroom with the sunken hearth, where he had first entered upon his arrival. Gidō’s surplice was hanging from the same hook as before. The monk himself was in the kitchen, crouched down in front of a stove in which he was building a fire.
“Good morning,” Gidō greeted Sōsuke cordially as soon as he saw him. “I was going to invite you along earlier, but you seemed to be sleeping so peacefully that I took the liberty of going without you.”
Sōsuke learned that the young monk had completed the first za-zen session by dawn and then returned to the retreat in order to prepare rice.
On closer inspection he noted that Gidō, as he fed kindling into the fire with his left hand, was holding up with his right a book with black binding to which he redirected his attention at every available moment. The book bore the imposing title of Hekiganroku.[81] Sōsuke wondered to himself if, instead of getting trapped in his own random thoughts, as he had the previous night, and overtaxing his mind, it would not be a lot simpler to borrow some standard texts used in this denomination and get the gist of it by reading. But when he suggested this course to Gidō, the monk rejected it out of hand.
“Reading over texts is no good at all,” he said. “In fact, to be honest, there is no greater obstacle to the true spiritual practice than reading. Even people like me who have gotten to a certain stage—we may read Hekiganroku, but as soon as the text goes beyond our level, we don’t have a clue. And once you get into the habit of jumping to conclusions on the basis of something you’ve read, it becomes a real stumbling block when you sit down to meditate. You start imagining realms beyond the one where you belong, you eagerly wait for enlightenment, and just when you should be forging ahead with all deliberate speed, you run up against a wall. Reading things is a snare and a delusion—you really should just forget about it. If you feel you absolutely must read something, then I’d suggest a work like Incentives to Breaking Zen B
arriers.[82] It will inspire you to greater commitment. Still, it’s something you read only for the sake of reinforcing that commitment, without imagining it has anything to do with the Way.”
Sōsuke did not really understand what Gidō meant. But he was aware that standing here in front of this youthful monk with the bluish bald head made him feel like a dim-witted child. His once overweening pride had long ago been ground down into nothing—ever since the events in Kyoto. From that time on, until this day, he had accepted his ordinary lot and lived accordingly. All thought of achieving worldly distinction had been expunged from his heart. He stood before Gidō simply as the person he was. He was forced to recognize, moreover, that in this place he was no better than an infant, far weaker, still more witless, than in his ordinary life. This came as a revelation to him, one that eradicated the last vestige of his self-respect.
While Gidō extinguished the flames in the stove and waited for the rice to finish steaming, Sōsuke stepped out from the kitchen into the temple grounds and washed his face at the well. Directly ahead of him rose a tree-covered hill. At its base a small plot had been leveled for a vegetable garden. His face still dripping in the cold wind, Sōsuke made a detour to inspect the garden. Once there, he saw that a large grotto had been carved out of the bottom of the cliff. He stood there for a spell peering into its dark recesses. When he returned to the anteroom a warm fire burned in the sunken hearth and the iron kettle was on the boil.
“I prepare things on my own, you see, and breakfast tends to be late, but I’ll bring you your tray in a moment,” Gidō said apologetically. “And being way out here, I’m afraid it’s pretty poor fare we can offer you. I’ll try to make up for it by treating you to a proper bath—tomorrow, hopefully.” Sōsuke gratefully took a seat on the other side of the hearth.
Presently, breakfast over, he found himself back in his room with his attention riveted on the singular question that confronted him: What was his original face before his parents were born? Since the problem defied rational thought, however, it was impossible to begin by extrapolating from what had been given; no matter how hard he pondered he could not get a handle on it. He soon tired of pondering. It occurred to him that he really should write to Oyone to let her know he had arrived safely. With palpable delight at this ordinary task to be done, he hastened to remove a roll of writing paper and an envelope from his satchel and began a letter to his wife. As he proceeded to write about one thing and another—how quiet it was here, to start with; how much warmer it was than in Tokyo, perhaps because the sea was so close; how fresh the air was and how nice the monk, the one he had the introduction to; how unappetizing the food; how rudimentary the bedding—he had before he knew it used up more than three feet of writing paper, at which point he lay down his brush. But of his struggle with the koan, of the pain in his knee joints from sitting in meditation, of his sense that his nervous disorder was only being made worse by all this pondering, he wrote not a single word. On the pretext of having to get the letter stamped and posted, he immediately left the temple compound. After wandering around the town some, haunted all the while by thoughts of his original face, of Oyone, and of Yasui, he returned to the retreat.
At the noon meal Sōsuke met the lay practitioner Gidō had spoken of. Every time the man passed his bowl to Gidō for more rice, he refrained from making any deferential requests and instead simply pressed his palms together in thanks and expressed his other needs with hand gestures. To receive one’s meal silently in this fashion, it was explained to Sōsuke, was in keeping with the dharma. The guiding principle here, apparently, was that to speak or make any more noise than necessary would interfere with the process of meditation. Witnessing such exemplary seriousness, he felt rather ashamed of the way he had been conducting himself since the previous evening.
After lunch, the three of them sat talking awhile. The lay practitioner told him that once, while engaged in meditation, he had fallen asleep unawares; the moment he regained consciousness he had rejoiced at his sudden enlightenment, only to realize on opening his eyes that, alas, he was his same old self. Sōsuke had to laugh. He was relieved to see that one could also approach Zen with lightheartedness of this sort. But as the three of them parted to return to their respective quarters, Gidō simply urged him on: “I’ll let you know when it’s time for dinner. Please apply yourself to your meditation until then.”
At this, Sōsuke felt a renewed sense of obligation. He returned to his room with a queasy feeling, as though he had swallowed a hard dumpling that now lodged undigested in his stomach. Again he lit a stick of incense and began his sitting. Distracted by the nagging thought that he had to equip himself with some sort of response to the koan, no matter what it was, he eventually lost all concentration and ended up simply wishing for Gidō’s early approach from the sanctuary to summon him to dinner.
Amidst all his anguish and fatigue the sun sank low in the sky. As the light reflected on the shoji slowly faded away, the air inside the temple turned chilly, from the floor upward. From early in the day no breeze had stirred in the branches. Sōsuke went out on the veranda and gazed up at the high eaves. Beyond the long row of black tiles, their front edges perfectly aligned, he watched the tranquil sky enfold the pale blue light within its depths, until both sky and light faded away.
19
“PLEASE watch your step.” Gidō led the way down the stone steps in the dark, with Sōsuke following a pace behind. Here, away from city lights, the footing by night was uncertain, and the monk carried a lantern to illuminate their one-hundred-yard passage through the compound. They reached level ground at the bottom of the stone steps, where tall trees thrust out their branches from left and right, blocking out the sky and seemingly close to grazing the tops of their heads. Dark as it was, the green of the leaves was still visible. It all but soaked into the weave of their clothing and sent a chill through Sōsuke. The lantern itself seemed to emit the same color of light and, in contrast to the mighty tree trunks that it managed to bring into outline, looked exceedingly small. The faint light it cast on the ground was no more than a few feet in diameter, a small pale gray disk bobbing along with them in the dark.
Past the lotus pond, they turned left and climbed up toward the Master’s residence; there the going became rough for Sōsuke, who was making the trek for the first time at night. At a couple of points the front edge of his clogs struck against the exposed surface of buried rocks. Gidō knew of a shortcut that, before reaching the pond, led straight to the residence, but the ground there was still rougher, and on Sōsuke’s account he had chosen the more roundabout path.
Once inside the entryway Sōsuke detected a good many clogs strewn about the dimly lit earthen floor. Bending low, he proceeded to thread his way through the footwear and stepped up into an eight-mat room. Alongside one wall six or seven men had seated themselves deferentially at right angles to the corridor leading from the entrance to the Master’s quarters. A few of them had the gleaming bald heads and black robes of monks. Most of the others were dressed as laymen, though in formal hakama. Not a word was spoken. Sōsuke stole a glance at the men only to be arrested by the severity of their faces. Their mouths were hard-set, their eyebrows closely knit in concentration. They appeared heedless of whoever was next to them and oblivious to anyone entering from the outside, no matter what manner of man he might be. With the bearing of living statues they sat utterly still in this room to which no fire brought warmth. To Sōsuke’s mind these figures added an even greater austerity to the already frigid atmosphere of the mountain temple.
After awhile the sound of footsteps filtered into the desolate silence. At first a faint echo, the tread of feet on the wooden floor grew steadily heavier as they approached the area where Sōsuke was sitting. Then, all of a sudden, the figure of a solitary monk loomed in the doorway leading to the corridor. The monk moved past Sōsuke and, without a word, exited the temple into the darkness. Just then a small bell tinkled from somewhere deep inside.
; At this, one of the laymen wearing a hakama of sturdy Kokura cloth stood up from the row of men seated solemnly with Sōsuke alongside the wall; he crossed over silently to the corner of the room and sat down again, directly in front of the open doorway to the corridor. Next to where he sat, within a wooden frame about two feet tall and one foot wide, there hung a gong-shaped metal object that was, however, too thick and heavy to be an ordinary gong. It glowed a midnight blue in the scant light. The man in the hakama picked up the wooden hammer from a stand and struck the center of the gong-shaped bell twice. Then he stood up, passed through the doorway, and advanced down the corridor. Now, in a reverse of the previous pattern, as the footsteps moved deeper into the temple’s interior they grew fainter and fainter, and ultimately died out. Still seated firmly in his place, Sōsuke was inwardly shaken. He tried to picture to himself what momentous things might be happening to the man in the hakama right now. But throughout the temple confines, complete silence prevailed. Among those who sat in a row with him no one moved even a single facial muscle. Only Sōsuke’s mind stirred, with imaginings of what might be occurring in the temple’s inner recesses. All of a sudden the handbell rang again in his ears, accompanied by the sound of approaching footsteps along the length of the corridor. The man in the hakama appeared in the doorway, crossed over to the entrance without a word, and vanished into the frosty air. The man whose turn was next stood up, struck the gong-like bell as before, and marched off down the corridor. Hands planted formally on his knees, Sōsuke waited his turn.
Shortly after the second-to-last man in line before Sōsuke had gone to take his turn, a loud shout resounded from down the corridor. Because of the distance, the sound was not so loud as to strike Sōsuke’s eardrums with any great force, but it reverberated enough to bespeak a mighty upwelling of righteous indignation. The tone was so distinctive that there was only one person from whose throat it could have issued. As the very last man in front of him stood up, Sōsuke, gripped by the consciousness that his turn was next, lost most of what little composure he had left.
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